P
enGA
BAnGA BAsi MorninG ColleGe
AffiliAted to CAlCuttA university
ProjeCt on: Shall I Compare thee to a
Summer’s Days (Sonnet 18)
Name: Md Tausif Raza
Stream: B.A Hons
Subject: English
Semester:2
Season:2022-23
Cu Roll No:222144-21-0061
Cu Registration No:144-1111-0177-22
Paper code:CC4
Submitted to: MR ANINDYA SEN
INDEX
CONTENT
[Link]
[Link]--Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
a) Poem
b) An Introduction to Sonnet 18
c)The Paraphrase
d) Critical Analysis of Sonnet 18
e) Conclusion
3) Bibliography
Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a
summer’s day?
BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
AN INTRODUCTION TO SONNET 18
Sonnet 18 is among the most famous of Shakespeare’s works and is
believed by many to be one of the greatest love poems of all the time.
It is a part of a large group of sonnets that Shakespeare wrote
addressing a man of great beauty. Shakespeare, In Sonnet 18, uses
descriptions of nature, and the power and images that they imply, and
directly compares them to the power the young man possesses in his
youth, vigour, and promise. Shakespeare then finds that the beauty
and power of nature do not compare to the beauty and power the
young man. He uses his poem as way to provide the youth with an
eternal existence and subsequently makes it evident that Shakespeare
sees young man as more than a human, he sees him as God.
THE PARAPHRASE
Shall I Compare you to a summer’s day? You are more beautiful and
gentler. Stormy winds will shake the May flowers, and summer lasts
for too short of a time.
Sometimes the sun is too hot, and many times it is overcast, and
everything beautiful eventually decays, either by some unforeseen
circumstances, or nature’s course.
But your beauty will never fade or lose its inherent loveliness; even
Death will not be able to claim you, when in my eternal poetry you
will grow.
As long as there are people who see and breathe, this will live and
give your life.
Shakespeare uses Sonnet 18 to praise his beloved's beauty and
describe all the ways in which their beauty is preferable to a summer
day. The stability of love and its power to immortalize someone is the
overarching theme of this poem.
CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF SONNET 18
Sonnet 18 is among the most famous of Shakespeare’s works and is
believed by many to be one of the greatest love poems of all time.
Like other sonnets, it is written in iambic pentameter form, consisting
of four quatrains and a rhyming couplet. It deals with the theme of
beauty and the way it is affected by time. In this sonnet, Shakespeare
also boasts to have the power to preserve his love’s beauty through
poetry which has lead critics such as James Boyd-White to claim that
it is actually ‘one long exercise in self-glorification’ rather than a love
poem.
The sonnet begins with conveying the beauty of Shakespeare’s love.
It is notable that their physical features are not actually described –
we are told nothing specific of how they look – instead Shakespeare
compares his love to a summer’s day and concludes that their beauty
is greater than that of summer and the sun. The poem opens with the
famous complimentary question:
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”
This question is flattering in itself as a summer’s day is often
associated with beauty. Shakespeare, however, explains that his love’s
beauty exceeds that of the summer and does not have its tendency
towards unpleasant extremes:
“Thou art more lovely and more temperate:”
Shakespeare makes specific criticisms of the summer: its beauty is
spoiled by strong winds and it disappoints us by being too short:
“Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date”
It should be noted that at the time the sonnet was written, England had
not yet adopted the Gregorian calendar and May was considered a
summer month. In the above quote, Shakespeare describes the
fragility and short duration of summer’s beauty. The use of the word
‘lease’ reminds us of the fact that everything beautiful remains so for
a limited time only and after a while its beauty will be forcibly taken
away.
In the second quatrain, Shakespeare continues his criticisms of the
summer. At this point, however, he focuses on the imperfection of the
sun and explains that it is temporary and, like other aspects of the
summer, tends towards unpleasant extremes:
“Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,”
Shakespeare states that the sun, which he personifies and refers to as
‘the eye of heaven’, can be too hot or blocked from view by the
clouds unlike his ‘more temperate’ love.
In the second quatrain Shakespeare poses his problem fairly
explicitly: every beauty will fade either by chance or through the
natural course of time:
“And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed”
The repetition of the word ‘fair’ highlights the fact that this fate is
inescapable for everything that possesses beauty. Shakespeare,
however, states that his love will not lose their beauty to death or time
but will be preserved through his poetry:
“But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st”
Shakespeare’s self-assured claim makes it possible to argue that the
purpose of the poem was not actually to pay a beloved person a
compliment but rather to praise oneself for poetic skill. Evidence of
Shakespeare writing this poem for the purpose of praising himself
occurs subtly throughout the entire text. In the very first line, for
example, due to the rhythmic structure the word ‘I’ is emphasised
whereas the word ‘thee’ is not. This suggests that Shakespeare
wanted to focus on himself rather than on his love. Likewise in the
third quatrain, he personifies death and states that it will not ‘brag’ to
power over Shakespeare’s love – this could be interpreted as
Shakespeare stating that he will be the one who brags rather than
death. Critics have also argued that since Shakespeare chose not to
describe his love’s physical features, he was more concerned about
praising himself rather than his love.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 successfully conveys the
themes of beauty and the effect of time on it through a variety of
poetic techniques and effective use of the iambic pentameter
structure. This sonnet, however, very possibly should not be regarded
as a love poem due to the fact that Shakespeare has clearly aimed to
draw a lot of attention to himself as the poet and that his description
of his beloved’s beauty did not include much detail.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
WEBSITE: 1) [Link]
2) [Link]
BOOKS: British Poetry and Drama (14th -17th Century)
WRITER: Biplab Banerjee, Indian Books View
